Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Coachella Tales: Chapter 1

I guess this is cheating, since I didn't write it expressly for the blog, but fuck it, it's not like anyone reads it anyways. If JTPE$O$ doesn't dig it I'll stop. Here's the first part, completely raw and unedited, of a short story i'm working on that is a retelling of the amazing event that was coachella 2008. Hopefully this upcoming weekend will be just as fertile ground for interesting happenings...

oh yeah and coachella mini-mix at the bottom of the post.

Three Days of Madness: Or, The Best Weekend Yet.

We’re lost in Diamond Bar. We can see the freeway, it’s right there, gotta be less than a half-mile away, followed all the signs, only all of a sudden the road is gone. Literally, a fat chunk of macadam just excised from our route, bright orange cones and shiny reflective barriers telling us STOP GO BACK NO FREEWAY HERE, a dirt river that our steel horse can’t ford. I’m on the phone with B-don, telling him to stay awake, it’s only 11pm, we’ll be there soon, don’t go to sleep, we’ll be there soon, yes, yes, I know we were supposed to be there, yes, we’re lost in fucking Diamond Bar. Yes, Diamond Bar. No, I’ll explain later. So I hang up, look left, and tell Will to pull into the next gas station, because god-dammit, I will not be alone at Coachella this year, and B-don is waiting, and yes he’s awake still, and we’re an hour and a half away, and this is the night before the day that is the start of 72 hours that I will never forget, if I can remember them. It is the twenty fourth of April, 2008, and I am still smoking cigarettes, so I reach in my pocket for a cheapo plastic lighter, the kind that always breaks, and touch its overeager flame to the end of the smoke – genus Camel, species Light – that’s already between my lips, and roll down the window as I inhale. This is good, this is right, the nicotine entering my bloodstream heightening my anticipation and lowering my agitation, because it is, after all, the day before Coachella, the anticipation 364 days in the making, the agitation from 4 hours of waiting for friends who never came, 3 hours of crawling through the Valley on the 101, traffic done as only LA does it, and whatever asshole work crew was too busy to be bothered to put up detour signs after they biopsied an asphalt artery back to the 60, leaving Will and I driving the empty streets of this suburb-of-a-suburb at the twilight hour, trying desperately to get back on track. Orange-hued light from a chain of streetlights, infinitely long stretching out before us, let me know that we’re still somewhere, before finally we see a gas station. A cop car. I drop my cigarette out the window. Will wheels the truck around, the cop staring at us as we pull in.

“Hello officer, we’re just trying to find our way back to the freeway, we got lost trying to get around some road construction, could you tell us how to get back to the 60 East?” I say in my best Responsible Citizen voice, and wait for an answer from the shadowed window to whom I addressed my plea. Officer Smith, brave protector of Diamond Bar, Truth, Justice, and The American Way looks up at the two college-kid punks who just pulled into his gas station. What the hell are these kids up to, driving around his sub-suburb at 11:30 at night on a Thursday? Probably smuggling drugs in the back of their Jap-made pick up truck, what’s under that camper shell? Oh look, the one in the glasses is sauntering over, like he owns this place, the tall one listening to some fruity techno shit in the car. Stupid punk comes right up to the patrol car window, like he has any right, and says“Hello officer, we’re just trying to find our way back to the freeway, we got lost trying to get around some road construction, and we’ve got to get to our pinko-commie-tree-hugging-devil-worshipping music festival before we just break down and start stuffing our mouths with all the pills and pot and psychedelics we’ve got stashed in the back of our truck, because, god-dammit, we hate America.”Officer Smith knows this could be a ruse. Better just give the assholes directions to the freeway and let somebody else deal with him, ain’t gonna be any trouble in his burg. So he does, but not before giving the four-eyes a nice hard stare, to let him know that he knows what’s going on. The truck pulls out, takes a right, finds the on-ramp, the only car on the road, tail lights getting smaller and smaller, disaster averted, back on course for what Officer Smith knows must be trouble.